Ocean Air & Salty Hair - Vilano Beach - St. Augustine, Florida

Kristy Bettinger
Mar 25, 2021
10 min read

We just made a 12 hour drive to Florida for Hayden to race the Wild Boar GNCC ... and it is still winter .. so BEACH TIME it is! This blog is the middle part of a 10 day adventure starting and ending with a GNCC race! The related blogs will show up at the end of this one if you would like to follow the entire trip!

We knew the Florida and Georgia GNCC would be back to back weekends. Since they are the furthest to drive we decided to add in a beach vacation! We checked out a few different beach areas in Florida; our favorite is the Gulf Coast because it seems more Caribbean beach like to us. However, that was going to add quite a few hours to our drive.. so the east coast it is! St. Augustine, Florida has been on my list to visit due to the Reviews of the historic charm. St. Augustine is only an hour from the track, and no extra drive time. Perfect!

I wanted to find a place on Vilano Beach due to the great reviews I had read about.. beaches are not crowded, you can drive your vehicle right onto the beach, there is a grocery store and a few restaurants within walking distance. Vilano Beach is only a few miles from the colonial quarters of St. Augustine; one of the areas we wanted to spend some time.

I chose where we were going to vaca, but I left where we were staying up to David. He needed to find a place we could park our Burb & trailer, wash Hayden's race bike, I needed washer/dryer access, and preferably a full kitchen. You can’t get all of this with a hotel or resort.. so this is our first to give airbnb a try! We booked a 2 bedroom house in Vilano Beach area for Sunday-Thursday!

SUNDAY - we arrive early so we will drive around checking out the island, find some lunch, and get some groceries while we wait for check in.

It is 12:30 and I have not had my daily cup of coffee or much food ..I am getting a little hangry, we’ve stopped at a few places (A little difficult finding a place with trailer parking) .. so instead of searching restaurants I did a coffee search bringing up the Odd Birds Cafe only 3 miles away. 🤗but back across the bridge to the mainland.

I had to try their White Chocolate, Hazelnut Iced Latte.. YUM! it is so good! They also had a pretty tasty lunch.. we tried the chicken taco salad & Fried Greed Tomato, BLT.. I love fried green tomatoes!

We head over the bridge to the Publix on the island to grab our goodies... and the boys say, “finally we are at the house!“ We love the tropical feel of the house with the trees all around!

We only rented the upstairs of the house. The basement can be rented to, but we didn’t need another living space. Time to get unpacked, and cleaned up from the race so we can enjoy the next few days! We picked up chicken breast to marinate in Caribbean Jerk sauce and ready rice with vegetables for dinner to stay home tonight! Yea my boys are not going to be excited about chicken & rice.. they will have some peanut butter bananas, Greek yogurt, beef jerky.. whatever else they find because tonight it is whatever!

They love to microwave peanut butter for a few seconds, mix in a squeeze of honey, pour over their sliced up banana, and top with some dark chocolate. There might be a little XTRA PB on this one!

MONDAY.. Finally a day we all got to sleep with no alarm clock in the morning!! Except for Boomer girl .. she is my 7:30am alarm clock.. or should I say midnight, 3:00am, 5:30am, then 7:30am alarm clock! Oh well.. she is happy and ready to play so we go to the living room, turn on some Baby Bum and get the toys out.

8:30am I think the rest of the crew decided to crawl out of bed. Luke is like me; we wake up needing food.. so I get to fixin' up our breakfast while they play. Eggs, sausage, yogurt, and fresh pineapple is today‘s breakfast! .. and coffee for me!

We are all ready to go for a walk around the island to check out the Vilano Beach Pier in the St. Augustine inlet and the ocean side! Well David and I are walking.. the boys want to cruise around on bicycles.

Vilano Beach Pier

This was maybe a 5 minute walk from our house! ..And then a few blocks across the island..10-15 minute walk .. I dunno but it wasn’t far at all.. we were on the beach side! There is public access and you can drive your vehicle right onto the beach for a fee$.

We did not hang out on the beach long today as the winds were still pretty gusty and day 2 of red flag 🚩 ..The boys were not happy, but it wasn’t good beach weather with Boom. We made a deal we would come back the next day when the winds were supposed to be less.

We head back to the house to get ready to check out colonial quarters in old town St. Augustine. Yay! I’m excited to find different food places and shops! The boys said I’m picking everything we do and they think it’s their turn.. 🤔 just because they picked the beach and we didn’t stay long!

There is a public parking garage with easy access to St. George street with all the restaurants and goodies you want on vaca, not far from The Castillo de San Marcos, (a 17th-century Spanish stone fortress with views of the St. Augustine Inlet), and a public playground. Even though the boys think I pick everything .. I did try to choose things that they would find interesting to! Haha!

First, we stopped by the Castillo de San Marcos. They enjoyed walking/running around checking it out.. unfortunately they were not having the cannon firings until the weekend.. bummer!

Then we strolled up and down St. George street looking for a place to have dinner.. up and back mainly because I couldn’t decide where to eat or what I wanted 😂?! I checked out most of the restaurants and the menus. There are so many in the old buildings with unique atmospheres! I was feeling like somewhere beachy with some fish tacos.. so we ended up at Barefoot Bill’s Island Grill. They don’t have a website listed that I can find or I would link it In this blog.

The boys don’t go for anything different.. they stuck with simple grilled cheese and french fries. Lynlee was excited for some fries to! I had their fish tacos which was a Barefoot Bill‘s specialty 😋

Some views of Colonial Quarters St. Augustine, Florida:

After dinner we stopped by Kilwin’s to get some dessert! Hayden and I picked out some peanut butter and chocolate peanut butter fudge for later tonight. David and Luke had some ice cream. 😋

It’s cooling down quick and the sun will go down shortly... the boys want to check out the playground they saw pulling into the parking garage so we head there to let them run off some energy. Although, that doesn’t usually work as I think it should ..

Hayden yells at me to come see this squirrel 🐿 living in one of the house areas.. he always plays jokes on me .. so I think he‘s full of it!? I’m like oh ok where’s it at getting closer and..

Baa!! There it is looking out at us!! 😱 actually scared me because I thought he was trying to be a jokester!!

It has been a fun filled day so we are all ready to head back to the house to chill for the evening...

Hayden and I get our fudge out to eat.. here comes Luke and David asking for fudge.. what we didn’t eat your ice cream!!?? was that their plan all along!? Yes, it was some pretty good fudge but very $$ they said buy 2 get 1 free so I thought Hayden and I sharing was saving $.. haha..I think we paid for all 3 .. I could make a lot of fudge for what we just paid for those 3 slices!😳.. but I didn’t have to do the work and we are on vacation! DON’T WASTE ANY CRUMBS!

Tuesday - Is it time to go back to the beach yet!? Yes.. we are going, but first we need breakfast boys! I fixed us up some breakfast again.. I enjoy making breakfast on vacation.. it just makes everyone happier than going out to eat early! Luke and I don’t have to get hangry while we are getting ready. 🤷🏼‍♀️😂

It was still early so we hung out on the deck enjoying some sunshine ☀️ Hayden couldn’t sit too long before he was out on his bike riding wheelies...

The house we rented supplied us with beach chairs, a wagon, and beach umbrella to use! That was awesome since we were already loaded down with everything else!

Beach-time it is! It is quiet with very few people .. I don’t think we have ever had this much beach space to ourselves! It is still a red flag 🚩 today so we went towards the point of the island by the St. Augustine inlet where it seemed a little calmer. We saw a couple jellyfish in the sand!

Sandcastle building.. and checking out the Boulders .. looking for living things 😳

Lynlee‘s 1st beach adventure.. she ❤️‘s it!

Hayden‘s favorite was climbing the boulders, searching for shells, and just being Hayden.. Luke is all about building sand castles and searching for shells!

David and I tried to sit and enjoy a little... it lasted long enough for a couple pics

After getting wet the boys realized it was a little chilly with the ocean breeze.. we lasted a few hours at the beach today.. then back to the house to chill and get ready for our dinner reservations we made at the Reef Oceanfront Dining! We are excited, it looked like a really neat place when we stopped by on Sunday! (There was an hour 20 min wait so we passed it up) The neighbor gave good recommendations on it to!

The Reef Oceanfront Dining Our reservations were at 6:45pm.. we had tried for a little earlier for the view but 6:45 would have to work.

David wants to order breaded shrimp.. the menu has it listed as jumbo shrimp: grilled, coconut breaded, or shrimp cocktail.. so he says jumbo shrimp. The waiter says the original cocktail? He says yes.. 🤭 So I tell him I think he ordered fresh shrimp with cocktail sauce and not the breaded that would be fried.. he says no I just wanted original cocktail sauce!? ..I tell him I’m going to check with the waiter when he returns.. David is not going to eat shrimp without breading.. Well here comes the waiter with a nice fresh shrimp cocktail around the top of a glass filled with cocktail sauce 😝 David says.. I’m shaking my head and say just tell them you didn‘t understand what he was asking you and get the right thing., nope instead he hides it under the lettuce to make it look like he ate it!? I’m just laughing like you think they aren’t going to notice!???😂... well the boys both ordered kids cheese pizza .. yep David talked the boys into sharing their extra pizza!

I wanted seafood but then I saw GF Pretzel crusted chicken Salad with fresh strawberries and a strawberry vinaigrette.. something different so I went for that and it was amazing! The boys liked their pizza to.. you can guess David’s rating of the place isn’t good..however it was his own fault!

We leave the Reef looking for something to snack on for dessert.. David is still hungry 🤣!? We didn’t want to pay to park to get dessert at colonial quarters.. those were the only dessert places we were finding,

There‘s a restaurant called Beaches at Vilano on the way back to our house that our neighbor had recommended .. so we called them up and ordered 2 slices of fried cheesecake w/vanilla ice cream to go! 🤤 it was the BOMB - David and I ate the cheesecake and the boys ate the ice cream!

Wednesday - We had a few ideas of things we would like to do today.. so we listed them and let the boys pick . They choose the Alligator Farm and the St. Augustine lighthouse!

To get to the Alligator Farm we drove from the island back to the mainland.. down the road a few miles to cross the Bridge of Lions to cross onto Anastasia Island.

The Bridge of Lions is a historic drawbridge of St. Augustine.

After crossing the bridge we came to the Cheba Hut - Toasted Subs.. We thought this looked like a good place for a quick lunch! It surprised us for being a quick sub place everything was so fresh and full of flavor!!

Next stop.. Alligator Farm! David and Hayden stopped at the Crocodile 🐊 Crossing - Zip lining over crocodiles at the zoo! They had called ahead to make reservations for 12:30pm. Luke didn’t make the age/height requirement .. so Luke, Lynlee, and I walked around the alligator farm checking out whatever Luke wanted to do for the hour.

Luke enjoyed looking at all the different alligators, crocodiles, snakes, birds, ducks, turtles, whatever else they have there!?... We dug into the bottom of my bag to find a quarter to feed the ducks and turtles. We didn’t want to explore the entire place without dad and brother so we stopped by the playground for a bit. Lynlee had been a trooper riding around in the stroller so she had snack time while Luke ran around.

David & Hayden enjoyed their zip line coarse.. we ventured around a little while longer watching them feed the gators.. and the boys were having a blast with the faux gators!

And then they talked us into cotton candy.. 🤢 .. yea they Look like they are enjoying it for the first few bites.. and then the rest is thrown in the trash because they don’t like it anymore .. (that’s why we usually don’t buy it! )

We decide it’s time to go check out the St. Augustine lighthouse across the street from the alligator Farm. Well.. we didn’t think that one through.. Luke isn’t tall enough to go to the top of the lighthouse. I didn’t think to look up age/height requirements on a lighthouse 😒.. so we decide to skip out on that since it wouldn’t be fair to Luke.

Lynlee is overdue for a nap at this point so we took a little drive down through St. Augustine Beach area looking for something else to do. The boys say all they want to do is go back to that awesome playground... they are actually whining So much and won’t stop. We were looking for another playground something else to do in the area, BUT after an hour we were over it! Lynlee had a nap so we went back to the park..it was a win for us, it is free fun!

The sun is going down and the park closes at dawn.. We are right here close to St. George street so I want to go back to find another restaurant for dinner. We heard a live band playing af the Prohibition Kitchen .. music and good ratings.. lets try it! The food was amazing!